Strategic Dairy Farm Launch: Devon

Join us for the launch of our latest all-year-round strategic farm based in North Devon run by Jim Kirk and family on November 25 at 7 pm.

Discover more about the farm's history and get a detailed overview of their operations and herd. You’ll hear about their focus areas for the next three years, which include moving to 3x /day milking, people and business management and assessing and reducing their carbon footprint.

You’ll see how Jim’s investment in infrastructure including buildings, water storage and the parlour over recent years has benefited the herd and saved costs.

In the launch webinar you’ll learn:

• The background to Heaton Barton Farm with a virtual farm tour
• Current technical and financial performance using AHDB’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for all year round calving herds
• The long-term vision for the farm, future plans and a critical look at areas for improvement

Who should attend this webinar?

• Anyone wanting to know how to manage a family business through change or expansion
• Anyone looking to maximise return on investment for an all year round high production herd
• If you want to know about what to consider when planning and building additional water storage, silage clamps and cow and calf housing

For more information regarding the event please call Knowledge Exchange Manager, Bryan Nicholson: 07976 181103

If you have never attended a webinar before it is simple. It takes two minutes to register your place and when you join online you can ask questions from our experts.

About Heanton Barton Farm

A milking herd of 520 Holstein Friesians yielding 11 000 + litres with 350 youngstock and followers. The milking herd is fed a TMR ration and milked in a 60 point rotary parlour.

Most of the work including arable operations and silaging is done in house with limited use of contractors.

The Kirk family farm in North Devon and own 520 acres and rent 180 acres. Growing 80acres of maize which is bought as a standing crop and grow an additional 170 acres for their own feed. High-quality maize and grass silage enable the cows to produce consistently high yields.

Jim works with his father and brother in law and employs 3 full-time staff.  

Learn more about Heanton Barton Farm

About Strategic Dairy Farms

Strategic dairy farms aim to help farmers learn from each other through regular on-farm meetings where we will share key performance data and showcase what the best farmers are doing.

They form part of the Optimal Dairy Systems programme which aims to help dairy farmers reduce costs and increase efficiency by focusing on either a tight block or all-year-round calving system.

The growing network of strategic dairy farms has calculated KPIs for their enterprises which are shared at meetings and published online. These are physical and financial performance measures that are critical to success. Farmers can benchmark their businesses against these KPIs to help identify areas for improvement.

Follow the programme and find other local SDFs at www.ahdb.org.uk/farm-excellence/dairy